


She Can Be. She Will Be.

by elisi



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AO3 1 Million, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 14:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1188384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisi/pseuds/elisi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://wahiduddin.net/saint_francis_of_assisi.htm">For it is in pardoning that we are pardoned</a>. (St Francis of Assisi)</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Can Be. She Will Be.

**Author's Note:**

> Set some time post A Good man Goes To War (DW 6.07).

The TARDIS lands, and he smiles as he pulls the screen towards him.

“So what have you got for me this time, Sexy?”

There is no response (of course), but his cursory glance turns into a frown as he absorbs the data.

The planet is dead. Searching through his memory he comes across the name (Tellapia), the date (35th century)... And a whole species (willowy, telepathic, on the brink of space travel) wiped out. 

Cause: Unknown.

Switching to a look outside the hull, he sees that his box is standing on a pebbly beach, smooth green stones stretching out in both directions as far as the low hanging mist allows him to see. The ocean is quiet, but... he leans forward. There, on a rock, is a single figure outlined against the wispy smoke. A figure with a bowed, curly head - so still he barely noticed her.

When he steps out the silence is oppressive. It reminds him of a planet ground to dust (a London bus stuck in the dunes), and even the air feels wrong (he tastes traces of air-borne toxins at the back of his throat and shudders). So much death, and so very recent.... it surrounds him, weighing against his senses on all sides, but he tunes it all out as he wonders - why is River here? 

He walks up behind her, but she doesn't move, even though he is sure she knows he is there. She is clad entirely in black, the only movement coming from curls caught in the breeze. After a minute he quietly asks:

“What happened?”

She raises her head, but only to look out over the ocean. When she finally responds, her voice is so quiet and lifeless he can barely hear her.

“Me.”

The answer makes no sense, and he tries to find the right words. He has never seen her like this.

Reaching out he realises that she is shaking, and taking a look at her face he notices that she is... not _young_ , as such, but younger than usual. And the question he was going to ask changes.

“When did you last have something to eat?”

She slowly turns to towards him, before shaking her head, her eyes looking straight through him, focussing on something only she can see.

“I don't know. I was so busy trying to construct a Delta wave out of... tin cans and bits of string I never really thought about food... and then it didn't seem important.”

The words leave him momentarily frozen. What could she possibly have needed a Delta wave for? Even when carefully targeted and refined the only purpose of a Delta wave is death. But now is clearly not the time for questions.

“Come on River, this way,” he says gently, taking her hand, and she nods absently - but doesn't get up until he physically pulls her. She stops again in the TARDIS doorway, as if loath to leave, but he keeps hold of her arm and gets her inside. Her listlessness is by now downright alarming. 

The kitchen is cosy as always, its cupboards stocked with what must be River's favourite foods (they're certainly not _his_ ), which makes feeding her easier, even though he almost has to force her to eat. But slowly the shaking stops, and when he trusts her to continue eating without him standing over her, he sits down at the other side of the table, watching.

It is not until she drains her second cup of tea that colour begins to return to her cheeks, a small spark of life returning to her eyes at the same time, and he breathes a sigh of relief. Despite being immune to the air borne poison, the lengthy exposure can't have been healthy for her. A good rest, and she should be feeling better - physically at least. Mentally however...

“River,” he begins carefully, because this is probably not the best time, “can you tell me...”

He spreads his hands helplessly, because he doesn't even know where to start. How long has she been sitting by the ocean of a dead world? And why?

A sliver of the River he knows reappears on her face, as she suddenly grips the cup with both hands, knuckles white.

“Where - I mean when - are we?”

Reaching out, he wraps his hands around hers.

“I know who you are,” he replies, a reassuring smile on his face, and some of the tension drains away. But not enough. He can sense the way it is coiled inside her, and tilts his head.

“Listen, if you just want to get some rest...”

She shakes her head, but pulls her hands out of his. For a moment she just sits looking at them, as if she has never seen her own hands before, slowly turning them over, and he has to fight an impulse to get up and shake her. Her secretiveness is usually a cause for teasing - or disputes as the case might be - but he doesn't know what to do about this sudden helplessness.

Then she looks up, and in the blink of an eye she is once more _River_ , a carapace of determination covering the strange new vulnerability.

“Sometimes,” she begins, “they offer me missions - dangerous jobs that count towards reducing my sentence.”

He nods, deeply grateful that she is finally talking. 

“I know,” he says, “I've been there on occasion.”

She smiles in response, the swiftest hint of delight, but it's gone in an instant, and then she keeps talking, voice smooth and even - as if relaying the story of someone else entirely.

“This time they wanted me to assassinate Androvax. Have you heard of him? Also known as 'Androvax the Annihilator - Destroyer of Worlds'. The last of the Veil. He'd destroyed twelve planets at last count, and recently escaped from prison, so they wanted rid of him for good... But the whole body stealing thing makes him very difficult to track. So they asked me.”

Pressing his lips together he leans back in his chair, studying her. 'Don't make hasty judgements', he tells himself, even though he is... not happy, to say the least. What was she _thinking_? 

But if she is bothered by his sudden withdrawal, she doesn’t show it, only stopping her narration for another sip of her tea.

"Now, when I caught up with him, I discovered that he had somehow found more of his kind - just a handful, but he was busy searching for a new home, and I...” 

Another smile, but this one is pure bitterness, “I decided to wait and see. And then...”

A brief hesitation, as the mask momentarily slips. But then she continues, still far too calm for his liking.

“And then it was too late. I don't know what happened - if he threatened them, or if it was an accident, but he came to Tellapia and they shot down his ship. I thought he had died too, but when I tried to find his body it wasn't there. And by the time I finally found him...” 

She swallows.

“He _laughed_ when I killed him. _Bastard_. If I'd known...” 

There is a brief flash of anger in her eyes, cold and deadly, but it is only a momentary thing, soon overtaken by the deep exhaustion of before, as her eyes leave his and once more stare into nothing.

“But then, I was made to be a weapon...”

The hopelessness in her voice forces him back into action. No matter what he might be thinking or feeling about this revelation, _she_ needs rest, since she is obviously still on the brink of falling apart completely, and he doesn’t have a clue what to do. Rest seems the obvious answer for now.

Pulling her to her feet for the second time, he guides her through the corridors towards her bedroom, and she follows impassively. But halfway down an unimportant corridor she turns, abruptly pushing him up against a door he can't quite remember, and searches his eyes, her face still haunted by terrible shadows that he doesn't understand.

“Doctor... do you love me?”

The naked despair that shines through her eyes makes him pause almost more than the question itself, which has him tripping over several mental stumbling blocks - and he knows he has but fractions of a second in which to formulate a reply.

His first instinct is to bristle against the question, wonder how she can possibly ask him this, after what she has just told him. And yet... He has known for a long time that she has killed a good man. Would he now condemn her for killing an evil one?

Digging deeper he finds another layer... Because who is _he_ to withhold love from anyone, least of all her? If she can forgive _him_ , then surely he needs to forgive her in return... 

(The things he has done, the untold number of lives he has taken... There is so much darkness in him, how can he be surprised that there is darkness in her also?) 

He is abruptly, absurdly, reminded of a fragment of a human song - just a couple of lines, cut loose from their original context, but their relevance almost makes him smile:

_'And you're so much like me...  
I'm sorry.'_

Instead of smiling he reaches out, carefully cupping her face and studying her gravely.

“Yes,” he says slowly, deliberately. “Yes. I love you, River Song.”

Her response is to search his eyes again, looking so fragile he's worried she might fall apart where she stands. The word fragile has never before applied to her - what happened? This is far more than the assassination.

(At the back of his mind a Delta wave is still casting dark shadows across his thoughts...)

Then she brings up her own hand to cover his, and for a moment closes her eyes, something like peace settling on her features. He wants to get her to her room so she can get some proper sleep, but instead she opens her eyes and reaches behind him, and he can feel the door swinging open.

Stepping inside and looking around, he notices that they're in a room he has never seen before. It's cosy and intimate, with a large bed, and with a odd pang he realises that this is _their_ room.

They have a room... 

('Of course', he chides himself. _'She_ can archive things that haven't happened yet.')

But still - a room he didn't know. Yet another space in this relationship that keeps expanding.

And River is suddenly no longer listless. Determined hands have already made short work of the bowtie, and are now busy with his shirt buttons. And in his head more things slot together.

 _Their_ room. Their _bed._

But that means...

It means that right now, his words will be empty without actions.

(He has wondered - although he'd never admit it - about their first time (from his perspective). Would she tease, or try to guide? Would she make it... _special_ somehow? Flirty, naughty thoughts have been dancing tantalisingly through his mind at inopportune moments... But a situation like his never occurred to him.)

As he reaches out, undoing her collar, she takes a sharp intake of breath, her hands stilling, resting on his chest. When she moves again, reaching up to pull down one of his braces, she starts talking, and - desperate to play his part right, and sensing that the (to her) familiar actions are the only things that keep her going - he slowly undresses her in return.

This time, however, her voice is anything but even, the words stumbling and almost stuttering.

“He... Androvax... He poisoned the planet before I found him.” 

The other brace, the last shirt buttons. He finds a strap (a strap?) that holds her top together and undoes it.

“Everything. The water, the ground - even the air...”

His trousers now. Her hands are beginning to tremble again. He removes her weapons belt.

“It was... a slow targeted attack on the whole species, on the whole world. He must have known I was coming, and would have his revenge come what may. I saw the beginning of it, after I killed him. And... there was no way to fix it. I swear, I tried... _everything._ ”

She has kicked off her boots and is now out of her trousers too, and he gives her a hand with his own boots, as she kneels down by his feet to pull them off.

“It would- It would have taken them weeks - maybe even months - to die... I could have left, but I'd _know_. And I could _hear_ them...”

For the first time her voice trembles, and she looks up at him. 

“They were screaming. All of them. Inside my head. So many voices, screaming in pain, and I couldn't-”

( _Human Plus. Human plus Timelord, specifically._ With the capacity to hear a whole world. Oh Melody, what did they do to you...)

She stands up once more, and he doesn't want her to continue, because he is beginning to see where her words are heading. He divests her of her underwear, but the naked pain in her eyes overshadows the sight of her physical beauty, and she is now fighting back tears.

“So I built a Delta wave.”

(And the rest was silence.)

“Oh River,” he whispers. This was not a burden he wanted to share with anyone, least of all her. The weight of a world is a terrible thing to carry, even if it was done out of mercy.

And then, _finally_ , everything falls into place. (He is old, and terribly slow sometimes.) The TARDIS didn't bring him here for _his_ sake, but for River's - he is what _she_ needs; this where she needs to be.

Filled with this illumination, he reaches out with his mind as well as his hands, surrounding her with one single thought as he pulls her down onto the bed:

_'You are not alone.'_

His River... 

He has seen where she sprung from, has seen her final end as she ran into the ocean, but he still knows so little of the path between the two. Yet he needs to embrace it all, he knows - deep deadly pools and sharp, sudden waterfalls, as well as the gentle bends and the brightly dancing rapids. 

And so he kisses her mouth, her hair, her breasts; her skin tastes of furtive poison, and, as he remembers the innocence he once saw in the eyes of an infant, he fervently wishes he could re-write the universe anew, just for her, saving her from the fate he unknowingly helped craft.

But their lives are held together with strands of gossamer, and he dares not tear a single one for fear of losing her completely. 

What he _can_ do, however, is make love to her; give her everything he has, everything he is, in this too-brief shared now. (In every shared now; always.)

Their first time (for him)... And it isn’t about him at all. 

He never imagined he'd have to lie with his mouth and hands and body (he speaks everything, and this is a language like any other). Never guessed he would need to feign familiarity to ease her surrender. But he needs her to pour her all grief and guilt into _him_ , instead of turning it inward where it will only fester and turn to bitter self-loathing, as he knows too well by far. He does not want that lonely darkness to claim her. 

It is not forgiveness from those she killed, but it's the best he can do. It will have to be enough.

So he holds her eyes, refusing to let her look away, absorbing their blazing gaze which now carry the death of a world, and he wonders if this is what she sees when she looks at him. 

Or maybe she sees _just him_ , the way he can see through the newly minted destroyer of two species and see _just a woman_ , clinging to him with eyes filled with such desperate need that it scalds him. 

It is not until afterwards, when she lies in his arms, utterly spent and more unguarded than he has ever seen her before, that the tears come in earnest. Great gulps of pain that seem to go on forever, and he wonders how long she sat on the edge of a dead world, keeping her lonely vigil.

He wants to mutter sweet nothings into her tangled curls, tell her that everything will be OK - but this is not a time for lies. 

(He remembers the fall of Arcadia, and knows that there are some moments that will never leave you, no matter what.)

So he tells her truths to come, gifts her promises and declarations that are/will be/can be/must be fulfilled, as he wipes her tears away. 

When her sobbing eventually subsides, he kisses her gently, whispering “Sleep, my love” and marvels at the ease with which the words leave his lips. His Love. _His_ Love. His _Love_. (To have and to hold.) 

And somewhere, deep down, something shifts. If loving - accepting, forgiving - _her_ is this simple, then maybe there's hope for him too...


End file.
